A Quick Geneseo Report

My week in Geneseo, NY for the Flying Aces Club non-Nats was a success. We had a great time and I passed some milestones and even learned some lessons about flying and preparation. I’ll try to summarize before leaving in a few minutes for the AMA Nats in Muncie, IN.

Sport Endurance

I took my Wanderer (OT Stick), King Harry (2 Bit+1), Bad Axe (Embryo), and my new Comet Pepper (OT Fuselage) expecting great things. Like all things, there were ups and downs. I logged eight official maxes with these planes. I maxed out with the Wanderer and took First Place. I maxed out with the King Harry and had a fly-off with Bobby Langelius – my 2:55 flight was not quite long enough to beat his 3:15 flight – so I took second. In Embryo, I got a max on the first flight of my Bad Axe, but learned I need to let my motor rest – I put up two more flights in rapid succession and they got less and less. The last flight was only a little over 90 seconds (lesson learned). My Pepper showed good flight characteristics right off the board, getting about 1:45 flights in test. I wanted a little more climb and a little more duration, so I made a new motor with the equivalent of one more stand of 1/8″. I grabbed the winder, wound up to less torque (but more winds) and took it for a test. It zoomed, did a wing-over, and powered into the ground – crushing the fuselage back into the cabin. Post-crash analysis revealed that I used different winders with different torque meters and wound to a much higher torque (lesson learned). I rebuilt the front half of the fuselage yesterday and it is ready to go for Muncie

The Judy did great. I made it into the 2nd round (of 3) in the WWII Combat – where they took out the bottom NINE. My Judy flew for 87 seconds that round, but the cut-off was 95 seconds. You can see my model in this photo coming right at you in the upper left.

Ronny Gosselin photo

The Goose proved to be a challenge. I had tested it on a loop of 0.050″ on each motor before and it was too weak for me. So I went with a loop of 1/16″ in each motor. It seemed to be too much power and we had to wrestle with thrust settings on the tiny Peanut. My best flight was 30 seconds; good enough for second in High Wing Peanut (only because of the 35 bonus points).

Jack and I winding. Ronny Gosselin photo

My B-52…I had literally dozens of low, low powered test flights on this at home. My build seemed to have induced wash-IN in both tips and I struggled to get that stabilized – tests would result in a flat start and then a nose-up pitch and a straight dive into the ground. I got that sorted for the most part, but it is always lurking in the background. Geneseo was the first time I flew the model with the engine pods on the wings. I have always been worried they would be very vulnerable to damage.

I saw some of the old flight patterns at Geneseo and in went in nose-first more than once. The pods “may” have a slight stabilizing effect, whether it is from drag or from weight (the assemblies are 2 grams each), I don’t know. Here is a video of a test flight of 43 seconds – I logged an official flight of 55 seconds. This didn’t come close to placing, but I was happy with it!